The Internal Revenue Service is postponing the date for filing gift tax and generation-skipping transfer tax returns and making payments until July 15, 2020, because of the novel coronavirus pandemic.
The IRS issued Notice 2020-20 on Friday, extending the relief it provided earlier this month on the tax-filing and payment dates for most other types of tax returns. The IRS also said the associated interest, additions to tax, and penalties for late filing or late payment will be suspended for the gift tax and generation-skipping transfer tax until July 15.
Varun Ebenezer is a senior IT audit manager at BMO Financial Group, USA, and a member of the ISACA.
Sofie Quidenus-Wahlforss is the CEO and founder of omni:us, an AI provider helping the insurance industry embrace digitisation. Sofie, who was recently listed as one of Forbes ‘Top 50 Women in Tech’, originally founded omni:us after several successful business ventures, the first of which was set up when she was 21. Twelve years later in 2015, along with her team of co-founders, Sofie launched omni:us as a way to enable insurance companies to fully automate and streamline the claims process, utilising emerging AI and machine learning technology to understand, extract and validate data from a large variety of documents.
Bethany Faford will graduate from Nichols College in May 2019 with a BS in business administration. She is currently majoring in accounting and minoring in criminal justice. She is enrolled in graduate school and will obtain her MS in accounting in May 2020. Bethany is a peer tutor at Nichols College and is part of both the Zeta Alpha Phi Honor Society and the Delta Mu Delta Honor Society. She has worked at a nonprofit organization for two years and will start work at a CPA firm in June 2019.
The relief is automatic and applies to any amounts due related to these types of returns. There’s no requirement to file for an extension and the three-month period between the original due date of April 15 and the new deadline of July 15 will be disregarded in terms of any interest, penalties or extra taxes for those who fail to file a Form 709 United States Gift and Generation-Skipping Transfer Tax Return by April 15.
Groups of tax and accounting professionals such as the American Institute of CPAs, the National Society of Accountants and the National Conference of CPA Practitioners have been pressing the IRS to provide additional forms of tax relief beyond the initial relief granted for tax payments from coronavirus victims.
